Keynote speakers & invited symposium

Eric Laurier | University of Edinburgh | Read abstract
Eric Laurier is Reader in Geography & Interaction at the University of Edinburgh. Currently he is inquiring into the maintenance and transformation of human relationships as a shared ordinary concern. Relationships have a nearness to one another perhaps not best understood as knowledge. His more longstanding interests have been around the visual and spatial aspects of practical reasoning. Like many other members of the EMCA community he has drawn upon ordinary language philosophy’s conceptualisation of criteria, human practices and human encounters. Over his research career he has undertaken projects on interaction in the car; work and sociability in cafes; editorial work in video production; the valuation of secondhand goods; playing videogames; wayfinding with paper and digital maps; human-animal joint action; family mealtimes and arts collaboration. Trained as a cultural geographer, he was warned by one of his PhD supervisors to stay away from ethnomethodologists because ‘they study things like kung fu and tyre-fitting’.

Kenneth Liberman | University of Oregon & University of Southern Denmark | Read abstractKen Liberman is Professor Emeritus from the University of Oregon. He has a long research career in ethnomethodology and has done research in many different environments, from his early research among aboriginal people in Australia to many years of engagement with Tibetan philosophical culture. In his most recent book, More Studies in Ethnomethodology (2013), he presents a number of EM studies and explores – among other topics – his interest for the phenomenological roots of EM. Ken Liberman has for many years been interested in how coffee tasters establish objectivity in their description of taste, working with coffee tasters all over the world. His recent studies of congregational work of surfers in the water have brought EM together with his lifelong love for surfing. Ken Liberman is Hans Christian Andersen visiting professor at the University of Southern Denmark 2013-2016.

Aug Nishizaka | Chiba University | Read abstractAug Nishizaka is Professor of Sociology at Chiba University. He has been investigating the organization of interaction in various settings, such as prenatal check-ups in clinical settings. His current research is concerned with the study of interaction between evacuees/residents and volunteers/professionals in several settings in the districts directly affected by the earthquake on March 11, 2011 and in particular, interactions connected with the subsequent nuclear power plant explosion. His recent publications include: “Conversing while massaging: Multidimensional asymmetries of multiple activities in interaction,” in Research on Language and Social Interaction (with M. Sunaga, 2015), and “Instructed perception in prenatal ultrasound examination,” in Discourse Studies (2014).

Trine Heinemann | University of Helsinki | Read abstract
Trine Heinemann is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Intersubjectivity in Interaction. She is a trained Conversation Analyst, who is interested both in the purely grammatical aspects of social interaction, as well as in the role played by gesture, embodied actions and the overall material surroundings in which interaction takes place. Her recent studies include the investigation of where and for what reasons designers point as well as the ways in which home helps manipulate vacuum cleaners in relation to ongoing interaction.

Lorenza Mondada | University of Basel & University of Helsinki | Read abstractLorenza Mondada is Professor of General and French Linguistics at the University of Basel and Distinguished Professor at The Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interaction in Intersubjectivity at the University of Helsinki. She has published widely about embodied conduct in interaction, especially about the relation between language, embodiment, space and mobility. Her research material is collected in a wide array of different settings inside and outside of institutions and workplaces where people speak a multitude of languages. She has done prominent research on surgeons, architects, of people walking in the street – or debating in participatory democracy meetings. Lorenza Mondada was awarded an honorary doctorate of the University of Southern Denmark in 2013.

Invited Symposium: Convenor Douglas Macbeth | Ohio State University | Read abstract
Doug Macbeth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Ohio State University. His studies take up Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology and sequential analysis through Sacks and Schegloff, and his focus over the last 20 years has been classroom studies of order and instruction as grammars of action. The early grades, especially, are a window onto novitiate instruction wherever we might find it, and thus the instructed character of competent worlds. The aim is to write an alternate praxeology of instruction as it is played out in fine durations of material detail, and to address the conceptual confusions that continue to haunt studies of ‘teaching and learning’.